I must confess to falling prey to the power of the advertiser. Mulling on the autumn series of internationals and trying to assess who had done what to enhance his reputation, my eye fell on a page from the England v Australia programme. I was trying to work out tries per appearance, or some such statistical nonsense, but I found my view filled with - or even blocked by - Ben Cohen's, er, bits.
There he was, the England wing, naked except for a pair of tight-fitting pants. And the only statistic that stuck, as it were, was that Ben's central part could not have been more centrally placed on the area once reserved for 'Know Your Twickenham Fire Drill'. Not so much a centre spread as a centre bulge.
Anyway, 'Top Tackle' it said underneath. And I'm sure they're right. Cos it was, wasn't it? The tackle that Ben made on Ben, Cohen on Blair, the nephew of '66 World Cup George on the All Black full-back who is presumably no relation to Tone.
If Big Ben - I think it's fair to call him that - had not made the covering smother on very nippy little Ben, then we would by now be well into the process of ripping Clive Woodward and his five years to shreds. So, the England manager probably owes his wing one.
And that's just on the defensive side of things. In attack, Cohen is popping along at almost a try a game: 19 in 21. Which is as good as it gets, really. And, if you look at how he has scored his tries in the last few games, then you'll see he's gone through the full range. Against New Zealand he had a breakaway and a chance to show that he may not be as fast as Doug Howlett, but he's pretty uncatchable on the long gallop.
An unfair comparison here might be that Jason Robinson, previously considered to be what the technical experts call very slippy off the shovel, failed to overhaul Howlett in England's first game and Elton Flatley in their second. To be outdone by Howlett was not so surprising; to be left behind by Flatley was. Robinson has been wonderful as an all-round rugby-union player, but on the question of pure speed he's been reduced to that bracket of being superb over 10 yards.
Cohen's second try, his first in the game against Australia, came courtesy of a pass from James Simpson-Daniel. It required a sense of awareness in heavy traffic by both passer and receiver in the corner. Both emerged with footballing instincts honed. Cohen timed his cut-back from the touchline perfectly to wrong-foot the cover.
His second try against the Wallabies regained the lead for England. It was a rather glorious re-emergence into the light after the horrors of the minutes around half-time. He left his wing to cut through the midfield. Again, the passer was Simpson-Daniel; again Cohen timed his run, a burst on to a short pass, to perfection.
Against South Africa he followed up a break by Matt Dawson to find the line despite being tackled short to complete a rapid full house against the southern hemisphere giants.
Not so long ago there seemed to be a lot of England wingers ahead of Cohen in the pecking order. Dan Luger, Austin Healey, Robinson. There was a lot of talk about the Gloucester kindergarten: Simpson-Daniel and Marcel Garvey.
Well, Cohen must be the number-one name to be inked in now. He is playing with a new assurance. Playing for Northampton against the kinder of Kingsholm, he dropped a sitter in front of the Gloucester supporters who are not best known for pouring out forgiving signals. Cohen, however, played for the rest of the game with a quality that hushed even the most flat-topped of the Shed-heads.
He started the season playing at centre. I remember, when I went to see the new wing sensation of Franklin's Gardens, Oriol Ripol from Barcelona, bumping into Cohen who cheerfully said that he'd been put into midfield by Wayne Smith because the coach thought it would be good for him. 'Sometimes I haven't got a clue what's going on, but I'm getting there, I think.'
It seems to have made him a much more rounded player. In his early days - he's only 24 now - he was a storming winger who simply muscled his way around the old Northampton ground. Now he patrols the brand new Gardens with a brand new authority. He reads the game.
And, as he showed against Ben Blair and the All Blacks, he is prepared to do the covering work. Such duties may be bread and butter on paper for a wing, but when they are executed in the lung- wrenching 80th-minute of a cliffhanger, they reveal a resolve that was not so evident when Jonah Lomu ran all over England in 1995 and when Jannie De Beer drop-kicked them out of the World Cup of 1999. As you can't help but notice with Ben Cohen, it is the tackle that counts.
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